This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7119 from my application COMPUTER SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SETTING UP AN OPERATING SYSTEM INFORMATION THEREOF filed with the Korean Industrial Property Office on Oct. 19, 2000 and there duly assigned Ser. No. 61709/2000.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a computer system and a method for automatically setting up information on an operating system thereof in a basic input/output system (BIOS) table.
2. Related Art
With development of computers, peripheral devices thereof have been developed, thereby allowing computer users to use a plurality of operating systems in a computer system. The users use a plurality of operating systems as needed, and each operating system is stored in its corresponding hard disk drive. To use a different operating system, a hard disk drive in use is replaced with a corresponding different hard disk drive. For this purpose, a user is requested to change information on an operating system by running a CMOS set-up program at the time of booting up the computer system.
The process of booting a computer system by replacing a hard disk drive in which an operating system is stored will be described with respect to FIG. 6.
First, the user supplies external power to the computer system (P10), and a CMOS set-up program is then executed (P20). Information on a new operating system, such as WINDOWS98/WINDOWS2000 ACPI, WINDOWS98 APM, and so on, stored in its corresponding hard disk drive, is stored in a BIOS table (P30). Then, the computer system is rebooted (P40), and the computer system executes a read only memory (ROM) BIOS power-on self-test (POST) routine (P50). According to the ROM BIOS POST routine, peripheral devices and hard disk drives of the computer system are checked, and the system parameters are set up according to the operating system stored in the BIOS table of the CMOS set-up program (P60). The ROM BIOS POST routine terminates (P70), and the computer system is rebooted under the new operating system stored in the hard disk drive (P80).
However, according to the conventional method, a user has to repeat the above-described process whenever a hard disk drive is replaced. It is cumbersome and time-consuming to change information of the operating system stored in the hard disk drive by running the CMOS set-up program every time. Furthermore, if incorrect or wrong information of the operating system is set up, the computer system will malfunction.
Therefore, there is a need for a method of automatically setting up information on an operating system stored in the hard disk drive in the CMOS set-up BIOS table at the same time that external power is supplied to the computer system.
The following patents are considered to be representative of the prior art, and are burdened by the disadvantages set forth herein: U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,711 to Hugard et al., entitled SYSTEM FOR MULTIPLE ACCESS HARD DISK PARTITIONING, issued on Aug. 4, 1992, U.S. Pat. No. 5,497,490 to Harada et al., entitled AUTOMATIC RECONFIGURATION OF ALTERABLE SYSTEMS, issued on Mar. 5, 1996, U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,781 to Weber, entitled MULTIPLE USER COMPUTER INCLUDING ANTI-CONCURRENT USER-CLASS BASED DISJUNCTIVE SEPARATION OF PLURAL HARD DRIVE OPERATION, issued on Apr. 18, 2000, Japanese Patent No. 2-181247 to Kashiyado, entitled PROGRAM LOADING SYSTEM, published on Jul. 16, 1990, Japanese Patent No. 7-028700 to Sano et al., entitled STORAGE DEVICE, published on Jan. 31, 1995, Japanese Patent No. 10-240503 to Honma, entitled DATA PROCESSOR, published on Sep. 11, 1998, and Japanese Patent No. 11-085529 to Sukegawa, entitled METHOD FOR STARTING DATA STORAGE SYSTEM AND COMPUTER SYSTEM, published on Mar. 30, 1999.
Therefore, the present invention has been developed in view of the above shortcomings, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a computer system comprising: a non-volatile memory for storing therein a BIOS table related to basic operation of the computer system; an auxiliary memory for storing an operating system of the computer system; an information memory provided in the auxiliary memory for storing therein information on the operating system; and a BIOS controller for automatically setting up the BIOS table of the non-volatile memory based on the OS information stored in the information memory when a BIOS POST routine of the computer system is executed.
Preferably, the BIOS controller is stored in the non-volatile memory. As a further preference, the auxiliary memory is comprised of a hard disk drive, the non-volatile memory is comprised of a flash memory, and the information memory is comprised of an EEPROM.
Effectively, the BIOS controller is configured so as to allow the BIOS table to be manually set up in the case where the information memory is not provided in the auxiliary memory.
According to another aspect of the present invention, the above and other objects may be achieved by provision of a method for setting up information on an operating system of a computer system in a BIOS table, the computer system comprising a non-volatile memory for storing therein the BIOS table relating to basic operation of the computer system and an auxiliary memory for storing the operating system of the computer system. The method comprises the steps of: providing an information memory capable of writing and reading thereon in the auxiliary memory; reading the OS information from outside to store the OS information in the information memory when the OS is installed in the auxiliary memory; and automatically setting up the BIOS table of the non-volatile memory based on the OS information stored in the information memory when a BIOS POST routine of the computer system is executed.
Effectively, the step of automatically setting up the BIOS table is conducted by a BIOS controller stored within the non-volatile memory.
Preferably, the auxiliary memory is a hard disk drive, the non-volatile memory is a flash memory, and the information memory is an EEPROM.
Effectively, the method further comprises the steps of: checking whether the information memory is provided in the auxiliary memory in the step of executing the BIOS POST routine by the BIOS controller; and manually setting up the BIOS table in the case where the information memory is not provided in the auxiliary memory.